The Tehran Transit Grab by the Revolutionary Guards and the Buyouts of the Transit Workers

Many Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company employees have received notices for buyouts. Many of the workers with more than twenty years of service with the company have been offered 15,000 US dollars in exchange for accepting the buyout plan. In order to pressure the workers into accepting the offer, the company has used tactics such as moving the depots to further distances from the city or even other cities such as Karaj to the west of Tehran and have reduced the employee bus shuttles, etc.

Several of the workers who had signed up for housing two years ago and paid large sums for it have also been offered to be considered earlier pending their acceptance of the buyout offer.

According to the Human Rights and Democracy Activists in Iran, the revolutionary guards have started a take over of the company through gradual steps. Several new bus lines, like the ones in the southern depot, have been offered to the guards. Under privatization schemes, several of the public buses have been turned to the companies affiliated with the guards. The buyout ploy is also seen along these same lines.

The chief executive of the public Vahed bus company is the revolutionary guards commander Ardeshir Moghimpour using the pseudonym Hossein Bijani.